But hurry, my dear. I’m eager to start.”

When Cherry went out to do her shopping, she certainly wished she had worn her coat. The air was nipping, and the wind whipped dust in her face. Flagstaff appeared a dead little town. She shuddered at the idea of living there. Limiting her errands to one store, she hurried back toward the hotel. She encountered Indians who despite their white man’s garb were picturesque and thrilling to her. She noted that they regarded her with interest. Then she saw a Mexican boy leading several beautiful, spirited horses. There was nothing else in her brief walk that attracted her attention.

In a short time she was packed and ready for her father when he came to her room. He acted more like a boy than her erstwhile staid and quiet parent. The car was waiting outside.

“We’re off,” declared Mr. Winters with an air of finality. And Cherry bit her tongue to keep from retorting that he could speak for himself.

Soon they left the town behind and entered a forest of stately pines, growing far apart over brown-matted, slow-rising ground. The fragrance was similar to that of Eastern forests, except that it had a dry, sweet quality new to Cherry. Here and there the road crossed open ranch country, from which snow-clad peaks were visible. Cherry wondered why Easterners raved so about the Alps when the West possessed such mountains as these. She was sorry when she could see them no more. Her father talked a good deal about this part of Arizona, and seemed to be well-informed.

“Say, Dad, have you been out here before?” she asked.

“No. Heftral talked about the country. He loves it. No wonder!”

Cherry made no reply, and that perhaps was more of a compliment than she usually paid places. The road climbed, but neither the steepness nor the roughness of it caused the driver any concern. Soon the car, entering thicker forest, dark and cool, reached the summit of a ridge and started down a gradual descent, where the timber thinned out, and in a couple of miles failed on the edge of the desert.

It was Cherry Winters’s first intimate sight of any desert. She felt strongly moved, yet whether it was in awe or wonder or reverence or fear, or a little of each combined, she could not tell. The sum of every extended view she had ever seen, in her whole life, could not compare with the tremendous open space before her. First it was silver and gray, dotted with little green trees, then it sloped off yellow and red, and ended in a great hollow of many hues, out of which dim purple shapes climbed.

“That must be the Painted Desert, if I remember Heftral correctly,” said her father. “It is magnificent. Nothing in Europe like it. And Heftral told me that this is nothing compared to the Utah country two hundred miles north.”

“Let’s go, Dad,” Cherry replied dreamily.

From that time on the ride grew in absorbing interest for Cherry, until she was no longer conscious of reflection about her impressions.